Computer Rage

I was hacked on Thursday.

 I’ve been hacked before but this was different.

I was lured by the hacker. He was a member of a Facebook writers’ group and posted a need for a beta reader.

I’ve been hiding under a rock, bah humbug over social media, and busy working on a novel, which I finished. The next step is to have Morningside Drive read by people who don’t know me for objective opinions. This is called beta reading.

That’s how I came across Adr lan. I offered to beta read his short story and he sent me the document in FB messenger.

But something was wrong from the start.

It was a legitimate story with markups from other critiques. However, FB messenger had a warning, if you respond Adr Ian would be able to phone you.

I didn’t want to talk with him. Instead, I commented on the writers’ group page saying I would return the critique document only in an email.

I never heard back.

Then, a friend phoned. “Did you send me a friends request and a poorly written covid message?”

“It’s not me!” I said, and spent the next three hours remedying the problem.

I pulled my hair out watching a Facebook video on how to report the incident. Nothing was easy.

The next day I visited the hacker’s page and found numerous requests for beta readers on a variety of different stories. It felt like aliens were reading my mind. The reality is hackers can’t read our minds but they must have access to computer searches.

What do you think?

Although I had been lured, I had a sense of complicity. Like I’d left the front door open and invited them to searched my underwear draw. Nothing was taken, just disrupted and I spent hours righting their wrong.

Now I’m experiencing what my friend Pat called . . . Computer rage.

. . . just saying

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